


Ugly

by GuineapigQueen



Category: South Park
Genre: Chronic Illness, M/M, Talk of Vomiting, super tiny mention of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15873840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuineapigQueen/pseuds/GuineapigQueen
Summary: Craig's life has never been beautiful. As he struggles with reality shoved in his face by a nasty flare-up, his own understanding of the way the little things in life touch him might just shift. Maybe not quite to beautiful, not yet and not while stuck in the devastatingly routine, but he's getting there.





	Ugly

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to explore chronic illness, and I wrote this for my dear friend Kirsten for her birthday. She struggles with chronic illness everyday and is incredibly inspiring with her strength.
> 
> A huge thank you to Blame Canada and to relvey for the beta job. You guys are the greatest.  
> And also thank you to Blame Canada again for writing the summary!
> 
> Soundtrack: Ugly - Sugababes

Craig’s life has never been beautiful. He knows nobody's life is totally glamorous all the time, but Craig feels like his own life is messier than most.

 

He’d like to be more normal, do the things that his friends do or just not have to think about everything he does in such depth. He’d love not to have to read the labels on everything before he eats it, or to not have to bring his own snacks when he goes to friends’ houses. He’d like to be able to do more things in general rather than be stuck in bed feeling unwell. At this point he’d even love to not miss school - at least he gets social interaction there.

 

His most recent flare up blindsides him a little, but he quickly falls back into routine. He doesn’t panic when it starts, there is no reason to - he just mentally prepares for the next hellish twenty four hours or so.

 

He’s pretty sure it’s a CVS attack this time, but sometimes he can be wrong or it could be a mixture of both. His body likes to find new ways to fuck with him, especially when he thinks he’s found something that works.

 

Craig woke up suddenly in the middle of the night with stabbing pain in his belly and things just went downhill from there. He defeatedly decides to turn off his alarm in the hopes that if he falls asleep he might stay that way for a while. He can’t manage to stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time, though; every time he feels close to rest he is jarred awake by the familiar stab in his guts, and once the vomiting starts it doesn’t stop. He realises pretty quickly that he isn’t going to be going to school tomorrow.

 

He’s jolted from his not-quite sleeping state by the sound of his door being pounded on. The _bang bang bang is_ relentless and unforgiving. Much like if he were to eat a trigger food, he knows he has to face up to the consequences of the banging now rather than later.

 

“Get up, Craig!” His mother hollers from behind the door. Craig can hear the click of the lock turning as she lets herself in. She always does things this way; she makes a loud noise and knocks first so that he’s got warning. It’s a tiny little bit of privacy that he does appreciate.

 

“Can’t,” he says pathetically from under the covers.

 

“Craig, _really?”_ She replies in that Mom voice that she always uses when she’s trying to call bullshit. It makes anger twist inside Craig’s already upset stomach - why does she always have to assume that he does these things on purpose? He doesn’t _like_ feeling this ill, in fact he’d like to go to school. He could see his friends and cuddle up to Tweek at lunch and just enjoy the damn day.

 

He tried the rebellion thing when he was younger, maybe thirteen-fourteen-ish, but he learned his lesson real quick.

 

“Really,” he tries to deadpan, it comes out a little more strained than he intends.

 

Damn it, he hates when his voice does that. When his body does _this._

 

Craig staying home from school isn’t a discussion, they both know this by now. His mother has seen how ugly flare ups are since he was a small child and she’s just as aware as he is that he can’t go out in public like this. She’s always poking at him, thinking that maybe he’s eaten something he knew he shouldn’t have or that he’s exploiting his illness for extra days off school.

 

Craig isn’t perfect, he’s definitely done some things that made him sick in the past and disobeyed the rules of his diet - but he did those things when he was a lot younger and stupider. Now, at seventeen, he really just wants to live. He hasn’t gone behind her back for months, maybe even years? Either way, she still seems to interrogate him every time his body throws in the towel.

 

“You really didn’t eat something bad at Clyde’s on the weekend? Did you get drunk again? You can’t expect your actions to not have consequences!” she says, each question pressing Craig further, and it makes him feel guilty even though he knows logically that he’s done nothing wrong.

 

“If I knew something was going to make me sick why would I do it?” he quips. But his attitude is sort of pointless when he’s curled in the fetal position on his bed trying to focus on not being sick. “I didn’t. People drank but I didn’t.”

 

Craig hasn’t really had much of a heart to lie to his mother about his (lack of) underage exploits. Craig doesn’t really drink at all, not after last time. He drank so much that he ended up at the hospital because he couldn’t stop being sick. His friends had called his mother, and she’s been extra suspicious of him being stupid ever since. That was years ago now though, and he hasn’t done anything stupid like that since.

 

Sometimes he does everything right and still gets sick anyway.

 

“Whatever,” she says. He can hear the eye roll in her voice without even looking at her face.

 

“Call me if it gets worse, call an ambulance if you think you’re going to pass out. I don’t want a repeat of you trying to drive yourself to the hospital again.”

 

Craig makes a face at the memory- he hates when she brings this up and dangles it over him. Yeah, it was a stupid thing to do, but he was thinking about saving her some money on the ambulance. It wasn’t like he was actively trying to make everything worse. That was the incident that spurred Tweek to learn to drive - when Craig had to keep pulling over, either to vomit or because the pain was making his vision blur. They ended up on the side of the road, and Tweek had to call his mother to come get them, and she hasn’t let him forget it since.

 

He tries to focus on taking a deep breath and exhaling instead of listening to the door slam shut and the sound of her footsteps fading away slowly.

 

It makes him worry a lot, that the rest of his life is going to be like this and that he’s never going to have any control. Sure, his friends mostly understand when he says he can’t come out, and Tweek has cleaned up his vomit before and somehow still finds him sexy, but Craig still can’t help but feel like it’s only a matter of time before they all leave. His body is extra gross, much more than the average person’s, and it just got even more gross when he hit puberty.

 

If that wasn’t enough, his problems don’t stop there. The stomach issues are probably the most outwardly obvious but his cabinet is a small pharmacy. He feels like he is constantly in the centre of a juggling act and it just isn’t possible for him to catch all the balls at once. Once he finds something that works for one illness another problem will flare up or there’ll be nasty side effects and med interactions. It’s a constant maze he’s navigating blindly, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes he has to concede and go without medication for one condition until he can find some kind of happy medium between the others.

 

There is nothing beautiful about Craig. He feels like he is just a bunch of labels strung together, prescription bottles all lined in a row - he’s just an exhibit for paediatricians who’d never quite come across his specific set of problems all in one person all at once.

 

He curls himself further into a ball and hopes for sleep.

 

///

 

Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome was the label his paediatrician found first. It’s a disease that presents predominantly in childhood but can and will persist into adulthood. It’s the thing that has sent him to the hospital the most, purely because of dehydration. Especially as a little kid.

 

The Crohn's Disease diagnosis came after puberty hit and he could actually articulate his symptoms better to the doctors. To really stress that it may not just be part of the CVS attacks, that this was a different beast entirely and that he was in fucking _pain_ even when he wasn’t vomiting. All that shit is still being juggled now, because there’s an element of guessing with any chronic illness. How they present themselves in such vastly different ways in different individuals and that they can overlap, like in Craig’s case.

 

After he hit puberty Craig went from having one chronic condition (albeit a rare one) to having four. He inherited chronic migraines and bipolar two from his mother.

 

Four little labels that run his life.

 

When he feels the first signs of a flare up, especially when he hasn’t had one in a while - he knows to cancel plans accordingly.

 

He’s missed birthdays, he’s cancelled dates and he’s even spent what was supposed to be his and Tweek’s one year anniversary with his head in a bucket. Tweek sat with him anyway. Like Craig wasn’t spoiling what was supposed to be the best night of their year, a night that Craig had been looking forward to for months. Tweek acted like it didn’t matter, said that they could do it another day - tried to downplay that this was all useless Craig’s fault. And sure they could reschedule but it wouldn’t be on the _right_ day. That’s what upset Craig the most; all he wanted was one night and the universe wouldn’t even give him that.

 

Craig did vomit a lot as a kid, but kids kind of just… do that? So no alarm bells were really ringing in anybody’s heads at that point. There was sort of a running joke in his family that he always ate too much candy and threw up at every family function, when in all honesty he hadn’t actually eaten very much at all. He grew up thinking that it was his fault, that he did it to himself.

 

 _“My tummy hurts”_ was his favourite phrase as a kid, and it wasn’t until he hit double digits that his mother finally started to feel like there was something wrong. He was missing way too much school, he was falling behind, and he was missing milestones that a kid should be enjoying.

 

He had a lot of tests done as a kid - lots of ultrasounds or scans, a lot of bloodwork and peeing into cups. A lot of being shuffled around to different doctors to try and pinpoint what might be wrong.

 

Being poked and prodded set a precedent and Craig doesn’t even have to think when he gets a needle anymore. He’s not afraid of blood work or I.V.s and didn’t bat an eye when all the other kids were crying about their shots.

 

Sure maybe his body was weaker than the other kids, but he thinks he makes up for it with a hardened spirit. Maybe.

 

///

 

He’s been friends with Tweek for ages. He’s had his core friend group since he was a kid and they’ve definitely seen some of the grosser parts of his life. As he got older and had a greater sense of embarrassment he tried his best to keep the messier details of flare ups to himself.

 

He wasn’t hiding, not really- just editing. Like an Instagram filter or any social media account, he was only letting people see the best parts of him. The closest he’s got to beautiful. He didn’t know if Tweek could like him without a filter.

 

Thankfully the first time that Tweek got to see Craig’s own guts betray him was not actually their first date. The relationship was fairly new but it wasn’t _that_ new.

  
They went out to eat and were then supposed to see a movie.

 

They didn’t make it to the movie.

 

Something along the way decided to disagree with him, but he couldn’t tell you what. He’d actually been sticking to his diet religiously in the hopes that nothing dramatic would happen in front of Tweek. He was feeling nervous about the date though, as he did before any of the dates they went on at the beginning of their relationship.

 

He started to feel ill during their late lunch but he tried his damn hardest to keep Tweek from noticing. He hoped and prayed that the attack would stay at a manageable intensity until the date was over, but things rarely turned out the way he wanted with the unpredictability of his illness. It’s difficult to roll with the punches when everything comes in hard and fast.

 

It started with his stomach feeling slightly upset, but that very quickly led to painful bloating. He picked at his food in the hopes that Tweek wouldn’t notice he’d stop eating it. One hand pushing his food around with his fork and the other pressed against his stomach.

 

Once his belly began to bloat, it was hard to keep things under wraps. Anyone could physically see what was happening, but the pain was intensifying and it got harder and harder for Craig to keep a poker face. People often don’t understand just how painful flare ups are, and Craig can never really know when they’ll happen. He can’t prepare.

 

He was wearing nice clothes for this date. He genuinely wanted to look good for Tweek; he hoped that on his good days he could be as attractive as any other dude. These clothes, nice as they were, were not the kind of clothes Craig would wear during a flare up. His jeans were cutting into his stomach painfully and the shirt hid nothing. It was beyond embarrassing.

 

All he’d wanted was to look nice for his boyfriend.

 

Tweek had asked him several times if he was alright and Craig had kept nodding while trying to keep the strained look off his face. Tweek, being the wonderful person that he is, wasn’t buying it.

 

“I don’t really feel like seeing a movie,” he suggested mercifully. Craig’s monkey brain knew right there that he was the one.

 

Craig didn’t have too much of a choice in when he got to show Tweek his ugly side- his body decided to do that for him. (Tweek had even been so kind as to suggest going straight home to Craig’s house - saying they could watch a movie there.)

 

Craig was about to say yes, but he vomited on the sidewalk instead.

 

He’d been so sure that the jig was up right there and then. _‘No,’_ he thought, ‘ _it’s too soon for him to see this shit.’_ Who wants to date someone who cuts a nice date short by vomiting everywhere? Tweek, apparently.

 

Tweek refused to go home and leave Craig at home by himself. He spent most of the time hovering in the hallway awkwardly while he lost his lunch in the bathroom. But still, he was _there._

 

And he didn’t leave, he stayed. Even when things got messier, worse, uglier. He’s not as afraid of Tweek walking away anymore and he doesn’t try to pretend he isn’t suffering when he clearly is. Tweek has his issues too. It’s part of loving someone, accepting them as a whole.

 

///

 

Craig gets a few more hours of restless sleep when he is roused again by the buzzing of his phone: it’s Tweek. It must be lunch at school and Craig knows that Tweek gets anxious when he isn’t there. Tweek always freaks that maybe he’s in the hospital or dying on the bathroom floor or something. He picks up his phone and answers the call, even though he’d rather roll right back over.

 

“Hey babe,” he groans.

 

“Craig! Is everything alright?! I texted you like five times!” Tweek yells down the receiver in that way he does. Craig gives his brain a minute to process Tweek’s ramblings.

 

“I’m just, eugh, I’m just sick. It’s just a flare up,” he says. He actually feels awful, he has a bucket by his bedside purely because he doesn’t think he’ll make it to the bathroom. He downplays that though- there’s no point winding Tweek up while he’s stuck at school.

 

“Are you drinking water? Gah! Do you need me to come around?”

 

Craig stares at the huge bottle of water he always keeps on his nightstand. He always has water because he’s terrified of getting dehydrated, if he gets too dehydrated he has to go the hospital and Craig would like to avoid that at all costs.

 

“I’ve got water, I’m okay Tweek. Come over after school, I just wanna sleep now anyway,” he tries his best to assure Tweek.

 

“Okay man, ring me if you need me! You know I’d ditch if you wanted?” Tweek promises. Craig can all but see him tapping his fingers against his temple to expel his nervous energy.

 

“I know, I’m gonna sleep though,” he says softly. He’s not lying. Sure cuddling with Tweek would be nice, but when he feels as bad as he does, he mostly just wants his own space.

 

“Okay, I love you,” Tweek says.

 

“Love you too babe,” Craig replies before placing his phone back on the nightstand as the call disconnects. He sighs loudly before curling back into a ball. He wraps his arms around his belly and screws his eyes shut, like if he thinks hard enough he can will away the pain and nausea. He can’t, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

 

All he’s got in his stomach is water and even that isn’t sitting right. It keeps sloshing around grossly before he inevitably brings it back up along with putrid stomach acid. He’s glad that this isn’t his first rodeo and that he has buckets all around his room. There’s absolutely no way he would have made it to the bathroom. His shaky legs would have buckled and he would have been sick all over his parents’ clean floor. He knows better than to leave those sorts of things to chance.

 

He’s already beginning to get that feeling of fading away. He’s been vomiting almost non stop since late last night and he hasn’t been able to keep water down since. He’s actually starting to worry that he might pass out if he tries to stand up. He doesn’t try, he just leans over the bed to be sick in the bucket, _again._ Sometimes the only way to get through an attack is to disassociate.

 

Despite the nausea twisting through his guts his thoughts still drift back to Tweek. Tweek always gets so anxious when Craig is having a flare up - nobody likes to see their partner in pain or sick but Tweek is a bit more full on than normal.

 

Tweek was also a witness to the Craig-poisons-himself-with-alcohol incident, and because that ended up being a big dramatic emergency, Craig can see where his anxieties may stem from.

 

But Tweek is an anxious person overall. His baseline is far more anxious than the average person’s and he’s quite reliant on medication, which Craig personally doesn’t see as wrong - he’s also pretty reliant on medication. Sometimes bodies don’t work how they’re supposed to, whether that’s a brain or a tortured digestive system.

 

Much like the rest of him, Craig’s brain doesn’t work right either. He’s lucky in the sense that it runs in his family and his mother knew exactly what to do before he ended up in a hospital or on a window ledge. Craig is pretty sure that chronic illness and depression are probably often cosy bedfellows. Craig himself has become comfortable with depression and the space in his head that it occupies. It curls up in his brain like a cat and he’d let it make itself at home.

 

It’s not just feeling sad though- that was the main part, the part he noticed the most, but anxiety seemed to run his day to day life, even if it was in a way he wasn’t actively conscious of. When he started on his mood stabilisers a lot of that panic evened out. He even began to notice that he had less CVS attacks and Crohn's flare ups. He doesn’t think that part is a coincidence.

 

He’s not cured, but it offers him hope that he’d never had before. He’ll take hope in any form that he can get it.

 

Tweek on the other hand does almost everything on his own. His parents don’t seem to notice him whether he’s happy or sad. Craig started to worry about him, like really worry, when Tweek was the one vomiting this time. It was anxiety- it made his guts clench and twist painfully in a way that Craig could definitely relate to.

 

Where Craig finds his own anxiety to be connected to stress or circumstances, Tweek just… _is?_ Like, anxious is just his natural state of being. Which Craig sees now as a symptom of a mental illness rather than something pathological, but hindsight is 20/20. Craig can see some of his frustrations reflected in Tweek, especially seeing as most people’s reaction to Tweek’s outward distress was, “ _Oh, he’s just like that.”_

 

_“Oh that’s just Craig, he makes himself sick every Christmas.”_

 

_“Craig just has a weak stomach, don’t you Craig?”_

 

Yeah, Craig knows that reaction very well.

 

So when things got so bad that Tweek stopped finishing his lunch and was throwing up between classes Craig knew it was something more than Tweek “ _just being like that.”_

 

Mental illness can be just as ugly as Crohn’s or CVS - just in a totally different way. It’s not a burden to Craig. Just because he’s seen Tweek ugly cry doesn’t mean that he thinks Tweek himself is ugly. If Tweek can clean up Craig’s vomit then Craig can most definitely help Tweek to navigate the unpredictable world of psych meds.

 

It’s nice to feel needed sometimes.

 

///

 

A painful lurch of his stomach brings his brain back to life. He clutches at the sheets and tries his best to stop the room from spinning. He fumbles at his bedside table for the bottle of water and mindlessly chugs. Any attempt at hydration is worth it at this point.

His stomach gurgles ominously and Craig already knows the water isn’t going to stay there. Not being able to keep water down is never a good sign. He’s already beginning to feel like he might faint, so he weighs up his options.

 

Option one is that he stays in bed, does nothing and waits to see if it gets worse. Experience tells him that attacks can and will get worse, and that sometimes doing nothing can prove more dangerous. Option two is he calls his mom to come home and potentially take him to the ER. This option means his mom will be annoyed at him because she’ll have to leave work and she’ll bitch and complain the entire time. Option three is he asks Tweek to ditch school and take him. He doesn’t like this option either, mainly because Tweek will worry himself sick the entire trip.

 

All three options are flawed, but the lesser of three evils seems to be to call his mom. She’ll be annoyed but at least it isn’t her first rodeo and she won’t panic the entire car ride there.

 

He retrieves his phone and hits “call.” He has her on his speed dial and despite her annoyance she always answers his calls. Even when they fight Craig is grateful for that.

 

He presses a hand to his stomach as if that might settle it while he focuses on his breathing and listens to the phone ring. After a couple of rings she picks up. She always does. She’s ever steady and reliable - unlike Craig.

 

“You need me to come home?” she says, straight to the point as always.

 

“Yeah,” Craig replies, seeing no need for embellishment or sentiment. They can get into specifics on the drive to the hospital. They don’t usually need to talk about these things anyway. She only has to look at him to know when things are really serious.

 

“You still puking?” she inquires, probably deciding mentally if she’s actually going to leave work and come home or tell him to harden up.

 

“Like every ten minutes since you left,” he clarifies. He tries his hardest not to be overdramatic about these things in the hope that it doesn’t take away from their seriousness when the more intense attacks happen.

 

“Okay, I’ll be home in fifteen and we’ll go to the ER,” she says and hangs up the phone swiftly. Craig lets his own phone click out of the call screen automatically and rummages around for the charger, plugged in behind his nightstand. If he’s going to sit in the ER for potentially hours he’d rather not be without his phone. Especially if Tweek wants to call him.

 

Tweek is a huge part of why he hasn’t gone insane already - maybe it’s because Tweek is the only person, outside his immediate family, that he is comfortable showing all these messy parts too. He isn’t afraid that Tweek will leave him anymore if Craig does something gross like vomit in public. Tweek even has vomit bags and first aid supplies in his car just in case, something Craig never asked him to do. It’s touching to know that Tweek is thinking about him even when he isn’t there. Tweek has seen enough shit to justify running, but as flawed as Craig is, Tweek is not without his own eccentricities.

 

Craig doesn’t mind staying up all night sometimes, his body intertwined with his lover as he holds him. He doesn’t mind that sometimes Tweek just needs to cry- he needs to let out all the frustration and anxiety and Craig is happy to be the one to hold him steady.

 

The first rays of morning light are the best part, the only good thing to be salvaged after an awful tumultuous night. They illuminate Tweek’s features like a Monet painting, his blonde hair as vivid as the haystacks, his eyes as deep and beautiful like the water lilies. He’s beautiful, even if he has been crying all night, even if he’s scared, even if there are scratch marks all over his arms. Those things are still beautiful to Craig, because they are still _Tweek._

 

Tweek’s so called ‘ugly’ parts are still _his_ parts to make _his_ whole.

 

Craig still doesn’t quite understand how Tweek can love someone like him, but he thinks that slowly, he’s learning to.

 

///

 

At first, the drive to the emergency room is quiet - Craig doesn’t really feel like talking. They have vomit bags stocked in the glove box of the car at all times. He has one sitting on his lap as he keeps his eyes trained on the road. He finds watching the road helps a little. Not enough to make it stop, but a little is a lot in this situation.

 

They aren’t going to Hell’s Pass, but a slightly bigger hospital north of South Park. It’s not an _emergency,_ emergency - but rather a regular emergency. These don’t scare Craig anymore- they haven’t in years. It’s more just like an unscheduled trip to the doctor at this point. If he were dying, or if there was blood, he’d probably just go straight to Hell’s Pass and call an ambulance. Because he’s not actually dying (but most definitely will if he lets himself dehydrate at home) they can take the time to drive to the bigger hospital where Craig sees a gastroenterologist.

 

“Are you going to tell me what you _actually_ ate last weekend or not?” his mother asks him, breaking the previously comfortable silence. Craig inwardly groans. He doesn’t want to have an argument right here when he’s expending all his remaining energy on not being sick. He’s an expert at not getting puke all over the car, but still, he’d rather keep the water and acid in his stomach down until they hit the waiting room at least.

 

“I told you what I ate,” he says flatly. He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration before returning his hands to his upset stomach. “At this stage, what’s the point in lying.”

 

“I’m just saying Craig, if you did eat a trigger food or you drank alcohol on the weekend be honest about it. I don’t want to waste the specialist’s time,” she replies in that frustrated mom voice. It’s her judgemental voice. She doesn’t believe him and she’s thinking that he’s wasting her time too.

 

“I would fucking tell you. I don’t _like_ feeling like this,” he counters. Just because he isn’t on death’s door doesn’t mean he enjoys all this shit. Maybe some people like the attention being sick gets them but that novelty wore off years and years ago. He’d rather he didn’t get sick all together, which is why he finds her lack of faith in him so offensive. He’s been sticking to his diet religiously because he wants to avoid exactly this. She knows this, she _knows_ him and that he doesn’t like doing any of this or feeling this way. Nobody stops to think that maybe he feels like his own time is being wasted too, that he’s pissing his life away in waiting rooms or curled up in bed. He’d rather be somewhere else too.

 

They spend the rest of the trip in silence, this time an uncomfortable one.

 

His mother has to call Tweek for Craig once they’re seated in the waiting room because Craig’s stomach gave in almost as soon as they got in the doors, and it hasn’t stopped since. He hasn’t been able to stop being sick since he sat down; he can’t even stop long enough to actually speak to Tweek himself. He knows that Tweek can hear him in the background and that it’s probably freaking him out. Tweek still hasn’t really gotten used to the frequent hospital visits just yet but Craig is confident he’ll get there.

 

Craig isn’t exactly a high priority emergency so they wait. And wait, and wait.

 

///

 

Craig’s mother seems to have given up on chastising him for the moment, probably because she can see how weak he’s feeling. She wraps her arms around him instead and rubs soothing circles on his shoulder. She’s done this ever since he was little, when she’d sing to him and refuse to let him go until he felt safe. Especially on long scary nights where tiny Craig was terrified in hospital, his mother the only hint of familiarity and home.

 

Even now she holds him close, despite him being bigger than her, he still needs her. She’s not afraid to get close to him when he’s feeling his worst or ugliest.

 

He’s still her baby and her baby is in pain.

 

“Tweek’s on his way,” she says softly.

 

Craig knows this, or at least he trusts Tweek enough to believe that Tweek would come to his aid. He appreciates the reminder from his mother though. It’s comforting and keeps him grounded.

 

He tries to get a little bit of sleep between rounds of vomiting but it doesn’t really last long enough to feel restful. He jolts awake every time his stomach lurches again but is still too weak to stay that way. It’s exhausting, but it’s called cyclical vomiting syndrome - it’s a goddamn cycle.

 

He knows that Tweek has arrived when his phone rings and his mother answers. He can hear her vaguely giving Tweek directions to where they are sitting but it sounds fuzzy and far away. His ears are ringing a little and his eyelids are heavy. He needs a fucking I.V. stat.

 

He can hear Tweek’s voice but it sounds echoey and faint- like it’s coming from another room. His eyes aren’t open to see Tweek but when he feels a second set of arms around him and a nose nuzzle into his neck he doesn’t need a second guess.

 

Tweek presses a quick kiss to the side of Craig’s neck. It’s chaste and discreet

so nobody else in the room would even know, but Craig can _feel_ it - that’s what matters. He can feel Tweek’s hair against his skin as Tweek nuzzles in closer. His hair is wild but still very soft and fluffy. It smells like his berry shampoo. It’s comforting, another reminder of home.

 

It’s all a bit of a blur when Craig actually, _finally,_ gets seen. It’s all business as usual though- he barely feels the anti-nausea shot and Tweek is far more anxious than he is about the I.V. drip being put in. Craig’s had a billion- he’s had nearly his whole childhood to grow out of the fear, so needles are a piece of cake (which Craig isn’t allowed to eat).

 

When the vomiting finally stops Craig uses that valuable time to finally get some sleep. He drifts off to the feeling of Tweek’s shaking hand gripping his own.

 

///

 

He’s staying overnight to get all the I.V. fluids he needs and will be discharged in the morning. It’s not really something he finds dramatic or exciting anymore. Even Tweek isn’t spurred into an anxious spiral over Craig’s overnight stay.

 

Neither of them will actually stay overnight with him. Tweek isn’t allowed to and he’s old enough (and experienced enough) to handle being on his own for a night in hospital. There’s no point putting his mother through a shitty sleepless night too.

 

They stay as long as they can though, even if the hanging around exhausts and wears on them. Craig has a bed at least, even if it isn’t super comfortable. He has a scratchy standard issue hospital pillow to rest his head whereas Tweek and his Mom only have the hard plastic seats by his bedside. His Mom wants to stay _at least_ until Craig’s gastroenterologist arrives and Tweek will probably stay until he’s forced to leave.

 

He’s a little bit relieved when he hears the _whoosh_ of the curtain around his bed being pulled open to reveal Dr. Harmon- Craigs gastroenterologist. He’s always so _upbeat,_ a jolly old man; Craig doesn’t know how he does it, considering he’s dealing in gross things like shit and vomit. He’s always been jolly, even when Craig first met him as a kid, and the familiarity of it puts Craig at ease. He has always been good at reassuring Craig when he was scared about undergoing a new test or procedure- to stay hopeful that he was going to feel better soon.

 

He’s kind of like a sweet old grandpa. He’s kind of chubby and on the shorter side with flushed red cheeks, wispy white hair and a huge smile.

 

“Hello Craig! Hello Laura and, Tweek? Right?” he asks.

 

“Hello Dr. Harmon,” his mom responds straight away.

 

The doctor has only met Tweek maybe once? And that was in a situation similar to this one where Craig had had an attack requiring emergency care. Tweek doesn’t come to his scheduled doctor’s appointments with him, though Dr. Harmon does ask about him. The doctor has known him since he was about ten. He asks him about his personal life quite a lot.

 

Tweek snaps to attention at the use of his name. He sits up a little straighter, how he always does when in the presence of some perceived authority figure.

 

“Y-yes. Tweek.”

 

“Ah yes, I knew it was something uncommon like that,” he says, more to himself than anyone else. Tweek winces a little- he doesn’t really like when people draw attention to his stupid name. Craig still isn’t sure what the hell his parents were thinking.

 

“Hi,” Craig says. “Am I dying?”

 

 _“Oh jesus!”_ says Tweek.

 

“Not today,” Dr. Harmon promises, “just wondering if there’s any trigger for this attack you can think of?”

 

“No. I’m eating properly but Mom doesn’t believe me.”

 

His mother rolls her eyes. She uncrosses and then crosses her arms again before she speaks.

 

“You went out with your friends on the weekend and came home like this. What am I supposed to think?” she accuses, frustration evident in her tone.

 

“You could take my word for it? I _want_ to get better, I wouldn’t lie,” Craig counteracts. He knows it’s messy to fight in a hospital but he’s just so _done._

 

“Hey, this is a no fighting zone,” the doctor cuts in quickly. “If Craig says he’s eating right I’ll take a chance and believe him.”

 

“He is,” a voice squeaks. It’s Tweek. “On the _-ah-_ weekend, he didn’t drink or eat bad or _-gah-_ anything. He drove me home. You know what I’m like man? I crack under pressure. I’d have _-nghh-_ ratted him out.”

 

Craig has to laugh at that because it’s completely true. Tweek absolutely would have ratted him out back in the emergency room if he thought it would help make the vomiting stop. Craig is relieved that Tweek will speak up for him when he’s done the right thing too.

 

“I’m sure you all know by now that there doesn’t always have to be an obvious reason for a flare up. The nature of these kinds of illnesses is that they’re unpredictable and maybe Craig just got unlucky,” Dr. Harmon states. He turns to Craig and asks, “Do you think that this is a blip on the radar Craig? Or do you want to explore different medication options?”

 

Craig considers this. Everything had been going pretty well up until now and he’s definitely seen a decrease in flare ups. He hasn’t had a debilitating one like this in a good while- it probably is, as the doctor says, a blip on the radar.

 

“Can I just see what happens? I think they’re working okay besides right now,” he says. If another flare up happens for no reason and he ends up back here again he’ll definitely consider tweaking his meds. But he’s liked the stability he had up until now. Maybe after this flare up he’ll get it back.

 

The doctor nods, says his goodbyes, and wishes both Tweek and Craig well before heading outside to talk to Laura in the corridor.

 

“Thanks,” Craig says once they’ve both left.

 

“It’s okay,” Tweek shrugs. “Wasn’t like I was _-nnn-_ lying dude.”

 

“I know, but still, she’s been on my case all day. I don’t know how many times I can tell her I didn’t _do_ anything?” He groans. He’s glad that Tweek and the doctor both believe him but it’s exhausting having to always try and convince his mother too.

 

“It’s easier for her to _-hnn-_ believe you caused it,” Tweek says matter-of-factly. He doesn’t even look up from scrolling through his phone.

 

“That’s not fair though,” Craig replies.

 

“I know, but in her head if you did it to yourself it’s an easier _-ah-_ problem to fix. It’s something she knows she can control,” he says. He looks up at Craig this time and speaks with genuine sincerity. Craig’s not really used to Tweek being this profound.

 

“She needs to get over that. It’s my body, not hers, and I’m not a kid anymore!” Craig knows he’s being petty, bratty even, but he’s so tired. He wants her to see things his way just once.

 

“She loves you. She’s been your caretaker for your whole _-nghh-_ life, but now you’re growing up and _-ah-_ needing her less. She’s gonna loosen up soon,” Tweek replies. Craig takes a deep breath and considers this- he supposes he doesn’t know what it’s like to be a parent, to dedicate your life to caring for a small human and then to, after eighteen years or so, have to step back. He doesn’t know what that’s like at all.

 

“When did you become such a fucking philosopher?” he says, smiling at Tweek.

 

“I dunno man, waiting for hours in a hospital lends itself to some deep thinking,” Tweek retorts with a chuckle - Craig flips him the bird.

 

“Fuck you,” he says with a laugh. “Nobody made you come here.”

 

“I’m joking, you know I want to,” Tweeks sincerely admits.

 

“Yeah, I appreciate it. All of it. Being my boyfriend can’t be glamorous and you’re _so_ patient.” Craig tries not to gush; he knows Tweek gets embarrassed when he does that but he needs Tweek to _know._ To know what an incredible human being he is.

 

“Like being _my_ boyfriend is all rosy dude. There’s shit all that’s glamorous about love,” Tweek replies self deprecatingly, like all the things he has done are no big deal, him waiting here for hours is nothing. Like all the bullshit Craig puts him through is normal.

 

“Okay, but there’s a big difference between a regular person's ugly side and mine. You clean up my puke all the time,” he points out. Tweek looks up at him with a frown.

 

“Ugly side? Dude seriously, I don’t see any kind of ugly side. Just sides. Different dimensions, you know?” he says, shrugging. “I like you how you are, or else I wouldn’t _-gah-_ date you. It’s not like either of us didn’t know what we were getting into when we _-hnn-_ signed up. I knew you had health problems, you knew I was _-ah-_ nuts. It’s not a big deal.”

 

For the first time some gears actually begin to turn in some forgotten, locked compartment of Craig’s brain and he sort of _gets it._ It’s not like he’s ever found Tweek’s ‘ugly side’ actually ugly. He doesn’t like to see Tweek upset or distressed but the vulnerability is kind of beautiful- it’s a private gift they give to one another. It’s a privilege to know and see every side, and Craig is grateful that Tweek allows him into that space. It’s not a burden, not really- it feels much more like a moment. A beautiful one, despite the mess. And for the first time Craig thinks he might be beginning to see what Tweek sees.

 

“I love you babe,” is all his mouth can put into words, but it seems like it’s good enough for Tweek.

 

///

 

The night is mostly uneventful- well, uneventful for a hospital anyway. There’s always this constant noise of machinery, the voices of nurses coming to check on you or people moaning and groaning for whatever reason. Craig is in a general ward so he’s sandwiched in with a wide array of people. There’s people with broken arms, people with chronic issues like Craig and people who’ve just managed to have the misfortune of landing themselves in the hospital for whatever reason. Craig is grateful for it to be over when he’s discharged right after breakfast.

 

It’s just his mother there to collect him and this is definitely because she forced Tweek to go to school. As much as Craig would like Tweek to be here right now, he agrees. He doesn’t want to make Tweek fall behind and it’s not like he’s deathly ill. He’ll probably rest today then go back to school tomorrow, his body permitting.

 

“Will you be okay if I go to work after this?” she asks him. Despite the tension between them yesterday her first words are said soft and kind. Craig feels a similar way about the argument, and he doesn’t have the energy to hold a grudge.

 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he assures her.

 

She’s quiet for a second. Craig knows these pauses well and he can tell that she’s considering whether it’s worth saying what she wants to say. She hums to herself for a minute before seemingly coming to some kind of conclusion.

 

“I can stay if you need me. You’re not a burden,” she says softly, like she’s afraid Craig might say no. It’s a weird dynamic shift. She’s giving him some power and it’s something he definitely shouldn’t abuse.

 

“I don’t want to be the reason that you always call in at work,” he replies, unsure.

 

“I might… I might stay. If you want the company,” she says with a small smile.

 

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

 

Craig nods for an extra affirmation as they start the walk to the car. Craig has a little bandaid on the back of his hand from the I.V. Drip but otherwise looks just like he always does. He probably looks healthy to the outside world, just a slightly more tired version of himself.

 

Only a few people get to see the inner workings of his flawed insides. They _are_ flawed, there’s no getting around that, but that doesn’t make him flawed as a whole. He’s a bit different on the inside, but he isn’t broken. He can love and be loved just as much as the next person.

 

Craig lets his eyelids droop on the drive home, his body desperately craving some uninterrupted sleep. He’s probably just about to nod off when his mother speaks.

 

“I’m sorry for not believing you. The timing just kind of made you look guilty,” she says, eyes still trained on the road.

 

“Mphh,” Craig mumbles, less than eloquent as he jerks awake.

 

“Oh shit,” Laura says, realising her error. “I didn’t notice you were asleep, I’m sorry.”

 

“S’okay.” Craig rubs his eyes and forces his brain to process her apology.

 

“I know I’ve given you reasons not to believe me in the past but for the last year or so I’ve been really honest,” he says after a minute or so of gathering his thoughts. “I don’t want to feel sick anymore, I wanna be as healthy as I can. So I won’t lie about that stuff, I promise.”

 

“I need to give you credit where it’s due. You’ve matured a ton since those incidents. Definitely since you’ve been dating Tweek,” she says warmly, like maybe… she’s proud?

 

Craig smiles to himself as he shifts a little in his seat, struggling to get comfortable after sleeping in a less than desirable position.

 

“I know you miss out on stuff too,” he says. “It’s not just me.”

 

Craig knows that the people around him suffer too. Sure he suffers the most and he’s the one going through the physical pain and discomfort of his illnesses, but other people miss out with him too. He’s sure his mother has cancelled plans with her friends because she had to stay home and care for him. It’s not just work she’d have to call in to.

 

The thing that gets him the most is that there are people who choose to miss out, they choose it for him because they want to be with him instead. They want him to feel better - to not be so alone.

 

She sighs and seems to consider her next words very carefully.  

 

“When you decide to have a kid you have to be ready for that kid not to be picture perfect,” she explains. “If you’re not ready to deal with a kid who needs a bit more attention and care than average, then you aren’t ready to have a kid, full stop.”

 

She’s staring back at the road again and Craig lets the silence settle. He tries to consider her statement. Would he be willing to give up a normal existence for a sick child? He doesn’t know, he’s only seventeen and has all the time in the world to figure that out. The closest he has to unconditional love is his family - and Tweek. And Craig does know he’d drop everything for them. He doesn’t resent Tweek for all the times he was inconsolable and irrational when unwell. He supposes this must be why his mother doesn’t resent him.

 

He looks out the window and watches small rain droplets hit the windshield. The sky is a dark grey and the air thick and heavy. He knows that when they leave the shelter of the car the wind will bite at his fingers and the rain will prick at his skin. He doesn’t let the gloomy weather dictate his mood though- he feels oddly content. He’s exhausted from his overnight hospital stay but for the first time in a while he really feels like he has something to hope for.

 

Craig is beginning to see slowly, that sometimes beauty lurks behind ugly clouds. That even though the storm may be ugly, beauty itself will always follow and prevail.

 

Maybe he’ll end up back here again, and have to start over from scratch with his medication. Or maybe this was a one off and he’ll get a nice long period of feeling almost normal. Either way, he knows that he has his people to support his shaky foundations. And that’s good enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is blesspastacraig if you wanna be friends :)


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